 |
| Since 800 B.C., Arles was inhabited by Ligurians, Celts, and Phoenicians before being conquered by the Romans in 123 A.D. This arena (Les Arènes) was built by the Romans. Notice that the buildings are so close to the arena that it's hard to get far enough away to take a picture. |
 |
| Most of the buildings are much newer. For example, the church here in the Place de la République was built between the 12th and 15th centuries A.D. |
 |
| Next, we went to Les Baux de Provence. Besides the remains of a castle, we were able to see reconstructions of several kinds of catapults. |
 |
| Generally, castles were built on the highest peak for strategic reasons. This is a view (from the castle hill) of the agriculture (mostly olive trees) below. |
 |
| The Cannes Film Festival takes place at the "Palais des Festivals" (shown above). Our plan was to park and walk around the building to where it meets up with the beach. Well, what we didn't know is that there's a casino next door to this building -- not to mention that the "World Series of Poker" was going there on from September 21 to October 4. Cannes is just a little town of 73,000, so when the film festival or a poker tournament is going on, traffic is a nightmare. It took us about 45 minutes to get through town to the "Palais des Festivals" and I pulled into the casino by mistake. Between oncoming traffic and a valet wanting to take our car, I had a heck of a time getting back out. So, in lieu of the tour, I pulled over into a "taxi only" parking spot, jumped out and took the picture above and about 3 like the one below, hopped back into the car, and took another 45 minutes to drive out of town. |
 |
| Like Hollywood, the "Palais des Festivals" has handprints of movie stars. Using my toes for perspective, you can see the handprints of Julie Andrews (to which I added an inset of the picture I took of Michael Douglas' handprint). |
 |
| Then, we drove to Nice which, like Cannes, is on the French Riviera. Nice, however, is much bigger (345,000) and there weren't any poker tournaments going on there, so there were no crowds as we walked along the boardwalk (which is made of asphalt) and the beach. |
 |
| The beach hotels were flamboyant and expensive, |
 |
| but even our reasonably-priced Ibis had a great view. |
